Let the Good Times Rock: The Tokyo Rock Magazine

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About Roppongi Rocks

Roppongi Rocks is a Tokyo-based rock music publication by entrepreneur and writer Stefan Nilsson. Here you’ll find interviews, reviews, articles and news with a focus on all sorts of rock music.

Japan’s leading international rock magazine Roppongi Rocks‘ readership includes Japanese metalheads and rockers worldwide as well as international rock stars and music industry folks. Roppongi Rocks covers everything from classic rock via hard rock and heavy metal to punk and extreme metal. We cover the major league acts as well as underground artists. If it rocks in a good way, Roppongi Rocks will cover it. Thank you for rocking with us.

Stefan Nilsson with Eric Singer and Paul Stanley of KISS in Tokyo in January 2018.

Stefan started his writing career in the 1980s and has been a freelance writer for many publications in different languages around the world. One of his early articles was a KISS gig review in 1988. His early interviews in the late 80s/early 90s included Roger Taylor of Queen (just weeks prior to Freddie Mercury‘s death), Magnum, David Bowie‘s guitarist Mick Ronson and future Candlemass vocalist Mats Levén. In 1989-92 he published the fanzine Rock Soldier (named after the Ace Frehley song “Rock Soldiers”).

Roppongi Rocks’ Stefan Nilsson with Megadeth’s David Ellefson in Tokyo in 2017.

Now Stefan continues that tradition with Roppongi Rocks, Japan’s leading international rock magazine. Stefan grew up in Sweden and lived in London, England for over a decade before he settled in Japan in 2004.

Stefan, who named one of his first bands in the 1980s after a Michael Schenker song (“Let Sleeping Dogs Lie”) and his son Akira after Japanese guitar hero Akira Takasaki of Loudness, is based in the Roppongi district in central Tokyo, Japan.

“This is lovely. Stefan, you are a great person in the scene to have. Positive all around. Too many always out for the negative stuff – it’s so easy to pick at artists” – Angela Gossow, Arch Enemy legend.